🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists seeking clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par